May 17, 2008

Blogging the past... 1994... 1918...

In my Time the Blog Forgot blog, the year that came up in my random number generator today is 1994, which seems like only yesterday to someone my age, but was (obviously) 14 years ago. I've got 2 posts about 2 things that were new:
Apple's new touchpad

Bill Clinton's new Supreme Court nominee Stephen G. Breyer
Meanwhile, The West Virginia Rebel, noticing me, takes up the practice of history blogging, looking a whole year and plucking a very juicy year: 1918.

(Also, I would love it if someone could help me fix a glitch in the template over there that single-spaces block-and-indent text and then keeps the single-spacing for unindented text that follows.)

14 comments:

George M. Spencer said...

Waves of flu swept people away. The joke was that you could get on a trolley car (or troop train) and be dead by the time you reached your station. Nothing like the muscular aches we associate with the flu. Instead, very high fever, bleeding, almost like the body was melting. Plague. Stephen King stuff.

EnigmatiCore said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
EnigmatiCore said...

In the stylesheet, look for this:

.post {
margin:.5em 0 1.5em;
border-bottom:1px dotted #ccc;
padding-bottom:1.5em;
}

Now make it look like this:

.post {
margin:.5em 0 1.5em;
border-bottom:1px dotted #cccccc;
padding-bottom:1.5em;
line-height:1.6em;
}

Then find this:

.post p {
margin:0 0 .75em;
line-height:1.6em;
}

You can delete the line-height line from that one now. This step is optional, but might as well be tidy.

It wasn't clear to me if you wanted the blockquotes to be double-spaced or single-spaced. For double-spaced, you are done. If you want the blockquotes single-spaced, find:

.post blockquote {
margin:1em 20px;
}

and add:
line-height:1.0em;

vbspurs said...

God, 1994, eh? I was still a teenager, and all I remember is hearing that Americans had gotten into this new-fangled thingie called the internet, big-time.

Suddenly AOL chatrooms were the latest rage, and everyone was approached at least once by 'hornydude6969' on #afterhours-hottub.

My parents had one of the first mobiles in the late 80s, which was as big as their car. By 1994, my father's musculature stopped flexing, since we finally got...oh the happy memory...a light flip-Motorola phone!!

Although each of us still had a beeper. Remember them? I'm sure Justice Breyer saved his page from 212-456-1414.

That's the White House exchange. ;)

Remember that Mario Cuomo was supposed to be the Clinton's first choice? Or was that before the Ruth Bader Ginsburg nomination? But he waffled as usual, the Clintonistas got angry, and Cuomo just had history of baseball videos to dub over in future.

As for the template, just make sure you are using "Edit HTML" then take out any extra < p >'s which stand for hard line-breaks.

Cheers,
Victoria

Ann Althouse said...

Enigmaticore: Thanks!

This is on the right track, but on preview, everything is single-spaced. I want everything double spaced.

Ann Althouse said...

I tried it without the step you called optional and it worked. Thanks!!!

EnigmatiCore said...

I don't know what you are seeing 'on preview'. What I can tell you is that when I load up your Time That Blog Forgot page, it now looks double-spaced to me.

EnigmatiCore said...

Hm. Well, that's odd! I tried it both ways and it appeared the same on my computer (which is why I called it optional). Further, logically, it should not be needed to have that in the .post p style definition, because it being in the .post style definitions means that it should cascade down (cascading style sheets!).

But if it works, then who cares!

Erik Opsal said...

With my new mac (I had a PC before) when I copy and paste things into blogger it doesn't copy it into the box, and instead to a weird imaginary box on the bottom of the screen. The only way it works is if I copy it into the html.

Any ideas what's up with that?

Ann Althouse said...

Erik, I had that problem, but the workaround is that if you chose the tab "edit html" instead of "compose" for the window (in Blogger), you'll be able to paste the text into the window. Then you can go back to compose if you prefer the way it looks.

Ann Althouse said...

EnigmatiCore said..."I don't know what you are seeing 'on preview'."

"Preview" lets you see what your changes to the code will look like before you save them.

Ann Althouse said...

Oh, I see you figured it out. The workaround.

For some reason, I'm not having the problem anymore.

WestVirginiaRebel said...

Ann: Thanks for the mention! I also added 1906 and 1972, when I would have been about seven. (I was a very precosious Rebel). This could be a trend in the blogosphere : )

As for 1994, that seemed to be the beginning of the nonstop cable news cycle with the OJ trial. I remember watching the chase and wondering if he was going to blow his brains out.

WestVirginiaRebel said...

P.S. Added 1989, as well.